


half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where

by girl0nfire



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Bucky is back except he isn't Bucky anymore, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, War flashbacks, all the cybernetic arm feelings, never leave a man behind
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl0nfire/pseuds/girl0nfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following Steve’s confrontation with the Winter Soldier over the Cosmic Cube, and the subsequent replacement of the Soldier’s memories, SHIELD takes the Winter Soldier into custody.  Steve comes to terms with who the Winter Soldier is, and works to help his best friend recover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in a slight-AU where comicsverse and movieverse just kind of got jiggy, you’ll get elements of both (comics heavy, especially Cap Vol. 5, 1-13). Title from Simon & Garfunkel’s “Only Living Boy in New York”.

The whispers follow Steve everywhere.

_I heard he nearly killed the Captain._

_… half-wild and brainwashed…_

_They say he thinks he looks like Bucky Barnes, that old sidekick._

_…that arm is supposed to be Soviet technology…_

_How come he’s not talking_?

Everyone’s wrong, or maybe no one is. Steve’s not sure anymore. He’s still reeling from the flood of his own memories, still pulled in every direction, still afraid to look the long-haired man in the cell at the end of the hall in his face. Maybe he’s afraid of who he’ll see.

Or who he won’t.

+

Fury hands him the file, and his face is tight. There’s a faint kindness in the gesture, but Steve’s still too raw from his deception to feel much empathy, yet. He tears through it later that night, cover-to-cover and back again, immersing himself in what little is known about the Winter Soldier. CCTV stills, crime scene photos, memos filled with redactions and deletions, pages and pages of poorly-translated Cyrillic codes. There’s no witness accounts because no one ever saw him coming; the only ones who might have are all dead, no shells and no fingerprints.

The file tells of a man forged into a weapon; sharpened like steel and honed to a point. Broken apart and rebuilt, upgraded like a machine and as disposable as one.

Twisted, warped, restrained and stored, bought and sold. Used.

What the file _doesn’t_ say Steve fills in for himself – the crunch of the snow underneath their boots, the biting wind as they whipped through the air toward the train. Fire, gunshots, explosions, and through it all one burned-in tableau: Bucky, gun raised, the red-blue of the shield clutched to his side. The rush of sound as the train car broke open, and the ringing silence that followed like the scratch at the end of a record as Bucky’s grasp slipped. The blur of the following hours, the burn of whiskey and the smell of smoke, the grit of a city’s ash on his tongue. Steve’s seen the photos of the funeral, visited the memorial himself. He was sure when he’d gone it would be the last time he ever saw Bucky’s face, even if it was nothing but stone.

Steve turns the slim file over in his hands, hoping that if he handles it enough, reads it enough times, maybe what is says will change. That maybe it won’t be about Bucky, or that maybe the Winter Soldier is just playing another double-cross. Maybe Bucky is gone, and all this Soldier knows it that James Barnes is still the best way to get to Captain America, even at the other end of the century. 

Sharon says that this man… that even if he was, once, he’s not Bucky anymore. But Sharon never saw the glint Bucky would get in his eye just before he said something funny; never saw his brows knit in concentration, tongue caught between his teeth as he read a half-broken compass. She never saw how his shoulders would slump every year on the day of his father’s death, and she never saw him load a rifle one-handed on the run. Maybe if she’d seen those things, she’d know. She’d know like Steve just _knows_. Like it’s the kind of undeniable truth some men would kill for; the kind of truth he watched men die for.

The kind of truth _he_ was ready to die for, shield on the ground and both hands in the air with the Winter Soldier’s sight on his chest.

+

The next morning, Steve’s up with the sun, not that that means he slept. Tucking the tangled sheets back underneath the mattress again, folding the corners carefully like he’d learned in basic, Steve avoids the file sitting on his bedside table. He dresses carefully, forgoing his uniform for civilian clothes, lifting the rust-dappled chain that holds two dog tags from his dresser.

That’s when he can tell he’s anxious.

Dangling the chain between his fingers, he watches the watery sunlight streaming through the window throw the stamped letters into sharp relief. Every soldier was issued two tags; one for the dead man and one for ones left behind. 

Steve and Bucky had exchanged theirs, after the attack on the first HYDRA base. No point in having one to send home if there was no one to send it to. They were all the family they had left between them, anyway, might as well get the pleasantries out of the way if they were going to march headfirst into Hell.

Tucking the chain carefully beneath his shirt, Steve wonders if Bucky still has his.

+

Tony catches him before he can make it to med bay, one hand light on his shoulder as he steers Steve into one of the empty conference rooms that make up most of the second level of the helicarrier.

Closing the door behind them softly, Tony turns to look at Steve, and his face is pained.

“Steve… I wanted to tell you before…” Tony starts to pace, avoiding Steve’s eyes as he continues. “They took his arm, Steve.”

And it’s a punch in the gut, knocking the wind right out of him, except Steve can’t place why it should matter so much.

“It was a wreck… just, ancient tech, and Fury wanted it examined as a potential security threat. I’m leading the team, we’re working as fast as we can, indexing, upgrading. I just… I wanted you to be prepared.”

Steve brushes past Tony, muttering something like _thank you_ or maybe it’s _out of the way_ , taking the stairs down to med bay two at a time because he has to know, now. Steve has to find out why it should matter that SHIELD took the arm, why it should matter that the Soldier didn’t take the shot, why it should matter that when the Cube blew back, the other man fell to his knees, crushed under the weight of every bullet he’d ever shot.

And maybe he’s rushing, maybe he’s pushing doctors out of the way, but he’s Captain America, goddamnit, and this is his mission now. This is the part where he charges, where he takes what he knows and applies it, where he suits up and ships out and damns the consequences.

But Steve reaches the end of the hall, and he hesitates. The mirror facing him is two-way, and through the dark reflective film he can see him. Scraggly, long hair and a scarred face, eyes closed and body slack, bound to the hospital cot with heavy leather restraints. Without the arm, he’s smaller, somehow. Incomplete.

Steve moves for the door, pulling out his keycard, but the conviction he had is waning. Moving to look through the mirror again, Steve sees his own pale face half-reflected back, superimposed over the still form of this stranger he recognizes.

And there, prone, silent and heavy, is James Barnes. Now that he’s watching his face, now that Steve’s finally let himself think it, he knows that it was never a question.

It’s him.

James Barnes is the Winter Soldier. And here, stripped of his last weapon, his hardened face arranged like stone in a false chemical calm, Steve realizes that Sharon was right.

James Barnes may be back, but Bucky isn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

The fire that had driven Steve to see Bucky ebbs as quickly as it rose, dragging him back, off the helicarrier and back to Brooklyn. Years later, Steve still won’t remember the journey, the time that passed between his recognition and his flight.

His hands shake as Steve tears the dog tags off his neck, dropping them atop the file on his night table before he sits on the edge of the mattress. Bracing his elbows on his knees, he cradles his head in his hands, fighting the mix of nausea and grief that’s been roiling in his stomach since he took that first look though the glass.

Time slips along, hours blurring together as Steve reads the file again, trying to find out just how he hadn’t figured this out. How he had managed to wake up in a world where James Barnes still lived and not know it in his bones; not know it before he was faced with what the man had become. How Steve had managed to pick up in a new time and dive back into saving countless lives, all while the one man he would have traded anything for a chance to save again still existed. Steve had been alone, in that darkness – Fury had known, and kept it from him. How many other people had suspected, had seen the photographs, before Steve had?

Steve spreads the contents of the file across his kitchen table and pours himself a drink. The wooden chair creaks as Steve settles into it, and for a moment he stares into his glass, watching the streaks of early afternoon sun spark against the ice, sending threads of gold twining through the honey-colored whiskey, before he reaches for one of the photographs.

It’s a CCTV still from Dulles, the one that Fury had finally shown him just a week ago. It is the last photo of Bucky taken before the Red Skull was killed, before Steve had seen him face-to-face, before Bucky had ended up in that cell. In the photograph, his face is hidden in the hood of his sweater and Steve can read his exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders. Bucky looks so familiar, so young, but now that Steve’s seen him up close, he knows that everything he remembers about Bucky Barnes has no bearing on who the man is now.

Pushing the photograph away, Steve lifts the glass and takes a sip. It’s a mistake; the whiskey turns to ash on his tongue, the taste of it combined with the table full of photographs before him dragging Steve through memories of other places, other losses. He sets the glass back on the table, the nausea shoving the grief aside in the pit of his stomach, writhing, and Steve can’t push it back anymore. Bucky’s eyes stare back at him accusingly from dozens of different airports and train stations, his profile circled in red in each blurred photograph. The eyes of the man he couldn’t save, the eyes of the man that managed to survive without his help.

Steve jerks, backhanding the glass off the tabletop, and it explodes against the wall, the sound of its shattering magnified against the bricks and echoing around the kitchen. The shards tumble to the tiles, glinting sharp among the spilled whiskey and ice. Steve grinds his palms against his eyes, willing the rush of images to fade, and rises from the table, abandoning the photographs.

+

Sharon calls. So does Fury. Sam. Fury again.

Steve unplugs the answering machine. If it’s anything pressing, they’ll contact him on his SHIELD comm. If not, he’d rather that they leave him alone.  
When the phone continues to ring, Steve rips the cord from the wall.

The silence isn’t any better. The photographs stay on the table, the shards of glass on the floor, and Steve pulls out the tidily-tucked corners of his sheets and tugs back the blankets with shaking hands.

All the faces in his dreams look familiar. Except none of them do.

+

On the morning of the third day, Steve’s comm rings from his nightstand, and it’s Tony.

Steve leaves it, rolling away and letting it ring, but the beep that indicates a text message sounds a few moments later. Turning back to his nightstand, doing his best to avoid looking at the abandoned dog tags and the now empty file, Steve picks up the comm and reads the transmission.

>> _Finished upgrade of arm, new model approved by SHIELD internal security team this morning. Scheduled for surgical retrofit this afternoon. Thought you’d want to be there_.

+

Tony clips the dark film of an x-ray onto the backlit frame on the wall.

“See, here…” he draws a large circle with the pad of his finger, “is where the old attachments were. The implant was nearly seventy years old, it’s a minor miracle it lasted as long as it did. The surgeons are working on parting the separate nerve clusters for individual conduction, and they’re hoping that he’ll regain full use.”

Steve grips the cup of coffee on the table in front of him. It’s cold; he hadn’t wanted it, anyway, but it gives himself something to do with his hands. His eyes run over the x-ray, lingering on the dark spots Tony says is scar tissue, and Steve may not be a doctor but he’s seen enough war wounds to understand what Tony’s trying to say.

“It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?” Steve speaks up for the first time since Tony started talking, and the man turns to him, running a hesitant hand along his beard as he answers.

“We’re looking at six weeks of recovery, easily.”

Steve looks back down at the cup of coffee, the surface of the dark liquid perfectly still in his grip, reflecting the question in his eyes back at him. Before he can respond, one of the nurses pokes his head in to the door. “Captain Rogers, Mr. Stark... the patient’s en route to recovery. The procedure was successful.”

Both men nod, and Tony turns to gather the x-rays. Steve pushes back from the table, abandoning the coffee as he makes his way through the med bay, toward the room at the end of the hall.

+

It takes four doctors and three aides to transfer Bucky back onto the cot, his body hanging deadweight between them as they lift him from the tangle of tubes on the gurney and settle him down, buckling the restraints around his body. Someone fits an oxygen mask on his face, and as the team files out of the room, Steve nods to them from where he’s stationed himself in front of the two-way mirror.

Bucky sleeps for a while, nothing but his chest moving as it rises and falls sluggishly. Every so often, a doctor stops by, checking the machine readouts and recording them in the chart stowed at the end of the bed. Steve doesn’t move from his spot, watching through the mirror. A junior agent comes by and offers him coffee, but Steve ignores him. He can’t tear his eyes off of Bucky’s face, and he doesn’t need any distractions as he waits for the sedation to finally wear off for the first time since Bucky has arrived on the helicarrier.

Another hour passes, maybe two, before a doctor slips past Steve, entering the room and performing the same routine checks, lifting the chart from its pocket at the foot of the bed. But this time, as the doctor circles the bed, Bucky’s head moves, his gaze tracking the man’s movements from one machine to another. He makes a small movement with his right hand, but the restraint jerks him back before he can accomplish it. Bucky turns his head fully toward the doctor, and Steve can see the lines in his face deepen, watches Bucky’s lips move beneath the oxygen mask. Finally, after a few eternal seconds of watching Bucky struggle against the restraints, the skin of his wrist turning white where it meets the leather cuff, Steve lets out a relieved huff of breath as the doctor turns.

He lifts the mask slowly off Bucky’s face, and Steve watches his eyes slide slowly in and out of focus as the doctor speaks.

“Welcome back.”

Bucky’s eyes rake the doctor’s face, and he redoubles his efforts against the restraints. Steve can see his chest straining, and he realizes finally that Bucky’s trying to move his left arm.

“I’m going to ask you a few questions. I need you to try and calm down.”

The doctor cradles the chart beneath his arm, pushing his glasses up his nose in a practiced gesture as he watches Bucky struggle with an indifferent look on his face.

“You are currently aboard the SHIELD helicarrier. You have just received a necessary operation to replace your cybernetic prosthesis. My name is Dr. Katz. What is your name?”

The doctor waits, his posture impassive, as Bucky’s chest heaves with the exertion of his continued struggle. He braces his right hand against the bed and attempts to lunge at the doctor, who takes a startled step back. Bucky grits his teeth, a shock of pain mixing with the wild confusion on his face, and as he drops his weight back against the bed Steve watches a line of red bloom along the gauze wrapped tightly around Bucky’s shoulder.

Dr. Katz speaks again, his voice louder as he takes another step back from the bed. He reaches to press a large blue button on the wall.

“Do you know what your name is?”

Turning his head away from the doctor, Bucky closes his eyes, the rawness of pain gaining traction on his face as the fight seems to flood out of him.

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes. I am a sergeant of the 107th Infantry Division. My serial number is twelve oh seven eight oh nine six.”

Steve’s heart drops into his stomach. Bucky – _James_ – he thinks he’s being held captive here. He thinks that he’s a prisoner. He’s woken up in a sterile room with no familiar face to anchor him, strapped to a table and in pain and for the second time Steve hasn’t been able to stop it.

Anger boils inside Steve’s chest, the empty space where his heart should be filling with the heat of it. He turns from the mirror, unwilling to watch the pain on Bucky’s face for any longer. Clenching his fists at his sides, Steve paces the hallway, trying to decide what he can do to fix this - what he can do to help this time. He refuses to watch this, to sit idly by like a good agent as SHIELD does this to Bucky. This is Fury’s design – Fury’s ideas, to tear the arm from him and lock him up down here, to put him through more hell before the man had even had time to adjust to the flood of memories thrust upon him. Fury’s plan to hide the Winter Soldier’s very existence from Steve until the last moment, putting all of their lives in danger, not the least Bucky’s.

A strangled yell tears out of Steve’s throat as he sinks his fist into the metal supply closet door in front of him. The metal warps around his fist, and as Steve withdraws his hand, his knuckles pink and throbbing from the impact, he follows with a sharp kick, leaving another deep dent. Bringing both palms up to smash against either side of the frame, Steve stops, his head hanging between his stilled fists as his shoulders slump.

That’s it, that’s the way he can fix this. Fury may have been pulling the strings, but this is Steve’s op now, his best friend on that table. There’s no way that Bucky’s recovery is going to be spent in a roomful of strangers who know more about him than he does, poking and prodding and forcing him into the world on their terms.

No. This time, Steve is going to get it right. This time, he’s going to be the one waiting when Bucky wakes up.

Dropping his hands, Steve casts a glance down at the ruined door. He reaches to crack the still-sore knuckles of his right hand as turns on his heel, leaving Bucky’s room behind him as he makes his way to Fury’s office. 

A medical team rushes past, pushing a cart of supplies toward Bucky’s room. Before he pushes the door open, Steve turns in time to watch one of the nurses sink a syringe into the straining cords of Bucky’s neck. His body slackens, and as the fear dims in his eyes, Steve shoves open the door.

He has some unfinished business with Nick Fury.


End file.
